With knockouts instead of strikeouts, testosterone a bigger issue for MMA than MLB

Maybe it’s just the paranoia talking, but a part of me keeps waiting for the mainstream sports world to figure out what we’re up to with testosterone use in MMA.

When a superstar pro athlete in another sport is busted for testosterone use and has to issue a public apology on his way to Suspensionville, I hold my breath. I wait for someone to point out that the same things that will sit down a Major League Baseball player for a third of the season can, in the world of professional cage fighting, be solved with a doctor’s note and a wave of the pen from the state athletic commission.

It’s not like we’re trying to hide it, either. Assuming the light-heavyweight title contest between Jon Jones (16-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) and Dan Henderson (29-8 MMA, 6-2 UFC) goes down as planned at UFC 151 in Las Vegas next weekend, three of the past five UFC title fights will have featured at least one competitor with a therapeutic-use exemption (TUE) for testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).

Meanwhile, over on the Bay Area baseball diamonds, use of the same substance has earned both Oakland A’s pitcher Bartolo Colon and San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera 50-game suspensions. How is it that MLB, where the most serious consequence of PED use is inflated statistics, takes testosterone use more seriously than MMA, where athletes are paid to hit each other in the head?

Maybe the better question is, how come no one outside our little bubble has taken note of the potential repercussions of this dangerous loophole yet, and what’s going to happen when they do?

Part of the problem, believe it or not, is the fighters who aren’t on testosterone. They’re the ones who should be the loudest critics of TRT use in MMA, but often they’re silenced by fears that they’ll seem like a whiner if they complain about it, or concern over offending a friend or teammate. I know I’ve talked to fighters who said they didn’t want to take a public stance on TRT because they weren’t sure whether any of their training partners might be on it. I’ve also spoken to fighters who say they don’t want to criticize an elder statesman of MMA such as Henderson because they’re hoping TRT will still be legal by the time they make it to their late 30s or early 40s.

That’s why I was encouraged on Tuesday to hear UFC light-heavyweight champ Jones say what I know many people are thinking, which is that any man healthy enough to fight for a living should also be healthy enough to do so without shooting himself full of synthetic hormones.

“You should fight the way you fight when you’re in your 40s,” Jones said during a recent media conference call. “I don’t think you should be able to take a drug to pretty much give you the strength of a 30-year-old again.”

When you put it like that, it’s tough to argue with. But if you need your logic administered in blunt doses, just ask UFC middleweight Michael Bisping, who described TRT as “dressed-up” cheating in a recent interview with Mauro Ranallo.

“Listen, we all get old. We all grow up, you know?” Bisping said. “At some point, as you start getting older, your balls don’t work as well, and you don’t make as much testosterone. But that’s life, and you deal with it.”

Or, if you’re an MMA fighter, you don’t. You hit the doctor’s office and the athletic commission, and then you don’t need to.

Henderson hears this sort of criticism far less than many other members in the TRT club. Partly that’s because, at 42 years old on Friday, he can make a more compelling case for a genuine, naturally occurring testosterone deficiency than, say, 33-year-old heavyweight Frank Mir. It’s also partly because, as a man of relatively few words, he hasn’t given people a reason to want to call him out for his testosterone use.

For the most part, fans like Henderson, and with good reason. They respect what he’s done over the course of 15 years in the sport, and they don’t want to denigrate his accomplishments. An outspoken insult artist such as Chael Sonnen is probably never going to hear the end of the criticism for his TRT use, but, whether for reasons of age or personality, Henderson mostly gets a pass despite the fact that he wasn’t much older than Sonnen is now when he began using testosterone in 2007.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the past five years of Henderson’s career – the TRT years, in other words – have been some of his most impressive. Ask an MMA fan what makes Henderson a legend, and you’ll probably hear all about his knockout of Wanderlei Silva in PRIDE, the time he starched Michael Bisping at UFC 100, his big win over heavyweight legend Fedor Emelianenko, and of course his Fight of the Millennium candidate against Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 139. All of that happened after he began using testosterone in 2007.

Granted, he’d already been fighting for a decade by then, and that was after he wrestled his way onto two Olympic teams, so it’s not as if he was simply average before he got a little hormonal help. At the same time, the legend of “Hendo” is as much about how long he’s been at this as it is about how well he’s done at it. It’s fair to ask whether he would have enjoyed so much success well into his 40s if not for the TRT exemption, which is something that simply isn’t allowed with such regularity in most other major professional sports.

For instance, look at Colon. He’s a 39-year-old former Cy Young Award winner. The fact that he was still earning a paycheck as a starting pitcher at his age seemed impressive, at least until we found out how he’d chosen to combat the aging process. If only he’d been an MMA fighter instead of a baseball player, maybe he could have applied for an exemption, produced some paperwork showing how low his testosterone levels were, and then done it all legally.

Again, I can’t be alone in thinking this is the exact opposite of how it should be. If anything, it should be baseball players who get testosterone exemptions and not fighters. What’s the worst thing that happens as a result of a guy such as Colon restoring his hormone levels to their previous high? What, he gets some strikeouts he might not otherwise have gotten? He unfairly threatens the records of other pitchers who did it all clean? An MMA fighter who finds the fountain of youth in a syringe can do much worse to others, not to mention himself.

You’d think a sport that has struggled as long and hard for legitimacy as MMA would be more vigilant about this sort of thing. You’d think the promoters and the regulatory bodies alike would be a little more concerned about both the long and short-term consequences of allowing some fighters to use performance-enhancing drugs in professional prizefights against opponents who are forbidden from using those same substances. You’d also think that, sooner or later, some of MMA’s enemies (or even just impartial outsiders) would seize upon this point and use it to batter the sport’s reputation. Honestly, I still can’t believe it hasn’t happened yet.

Sooner or later though, it will. When it does, I wonder if it will change how we think about some of these long and legendary careers. I wonder if we won’t look back at comments like the ones made by Jones and Bisping and be struck not only by how right they were, but by how obvious it should have been.

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